Etsy calls this their weather report.  I just update this post with the numbers Etsy publishes and put them in charts with all their historical data.

The charts are getting crowded with nearly 3 years of data, so July may not show in the legend but it’s the last dot on the right of each chart. June is always a dip in sales – ’tis the nature of retail. So don’t fret about that one.

And as always, here is the link to the spreadsheet where I keep those numbers on google docs if you want to copy and play with them yourself.  All I ask is that you link back to me if you publish what you use.

I just had to share the prize bag I won from Sarcastra’s blog giveaway over at  Too Lazy To Be Evil.  Look what she sent me…

Bunches of candy, and custom sharpie pens and a moleskin notebook, and even some toothpaste to wash away all that sugar!  Hubby and I decided to cut back on our candy consumption, and then THIS prize came in the mail.  I rationalized that the UNIVERSE wants ME to have CANDY.  So I ate it.  And it was good.

You might recognize Sarcastra as a frequent commenter on the DuhBe blog.  If you don’t already read Sarcastra’s blog – you should.  Her dry sense of humor is very entertaining.  Who doesn’t love a sarcastic quilter?  I especially enjoy how she manages to not kill her co-worker on her frequent business trips.

OK, my shameless plug for Too Lazy To Be Evil is over.  But I do enjoy her writings, and she sent me lots of Candy.

She rocks.  That’s all.  Check her out.

Wonderland – Debra and others brought up good points about trademark infringement with the word Wonderland.  It’s OK to use the word Wonderland,  as long as my artwork doesn’t infringe on existing works by Disney or Tim Burton, etc.  The Alice embroidery was just a photo prop and not really part of the shop theme.  You guys have the keenest eyes of any blog readers anywhere!  I’m still researching the Wonderland name in conjunction with the bath and body industry to make sure it’s not already taken.  There’s a sticky, tricky situation with that.  Like Kate said, I have a knack for researching these things for hours, so I’ll get that squared away just fine.

Packaging - You all said things I have heard before, especially about touching bare soap.  Some people like the soap completely covered, and some people want to actually SEE the soap they are purchasing, which is why those partial cigar bands are popular.  Tissue paper is an option like Brenda mentioned, and so is clear shrink wrap.  But I want to avoid plastic as much as possible.

Sara and others remarked on the muslin envelopes as a positive.  I agree.  My materials and labor for those fabric bags are actually very low using the rotary cutter and serger.  So I’m keeping that idea on the table.  (literally, the fabrics are spread all over my table!)   I also have a TON of fabrics to get rid of including rich silks and linens.  I must admit the fabric packaging idea was probably inspired by Charissa’s Gifted blog and her Japanese furoshiki.

Display – To Sarcastra‘s point about the display, she is right on.  My display photo was a sample and not the actual set up.  I haven’t even painted some of the awesome display pieces I’ve found on my thrifty jaunts.  But I will brag about my $4 rotating display later.  My plan for tables at craft fairs or farmers markets would be to have an unwrapped or partially wrapped soap of each scent in a dish, next to the group of those soaps for sale in a silver tray, cakestand, or some such wonderlandish container.  That way people can see the color and any special swirl effects, and they can pick it up and smell it.  Then they can purchase (hopefully!) untouched soap from the basket or tray behind the open samples.  Does that make sense?

Can you EAT it? Regarding Richard’s point on his grandson liking the soap candy – well, that’s a problem.  Do you know how many people have tried to take a bite from my soaps?

Seriously.  Several people, children and adults.

I think I will need a sign like this one…

Eco-Friendly – Charissa & Debra mentioned the green aspect of my products.  I’m trying to stay as natural as possible but there are some synthetic ingredients derived from plant sources that are too good to pass up.  I’ll save that story for another day, but you are correct in assuming my packaging goal is to keep things sustainable.  That’s just how I roll.

Testing 1,2,3… And finally, for those wanting to test some products I haven’t figured out a way to work this out yet.  Postage is pretty pricey since soap and stuff is heavy, and right now my pocketbook is very light.  But I would love to have some of you give me feedback on my products.  Maybe I can send a few 1 ounce sample sizes?  If you are a frequent commenter here (like more than 5 comments) – Send me your snail mail addy using the “contact me” link in the menu to your right and we’ll work something out for samples.  You’ve been so helpful with all your other advice so far.  THanK YoU!

Excuse me for rambling on so much.  This subject is near and dear to my heart.  I’m done for today.  Now I’m off to the Farmer’s market.  It’s only 3 blocks from my house on Fridays, how great is that?

I tried many different packaging approaches.  I still love brown kraft paper, and string, and muslin and linen.  So I played around with soap packaging and various logo designs…

I even put my sewing skills to good use and made some muslin envelopes and tied them with hand dyed silk ribbon…

They are very pretty, but of course the labor and materials for such a wrapper is much to muchness.  I may keep a few soaps like that, but I needed something faster and more cost effective.  So bring on the kraft paper and the immensely popular bakers twine…

I think they need more color.  The beige soap doesn’t pop, but the colored soaps with a little more edge showing might do the trick.

So I kept on with the kraft and twine idea.  (are you singing it yet??  In your best Julie Andrews voice?  “Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things”)  Moving on to boxes for solid shampoo and conditioners…

Here’s a solid lotion bar in a box with clear lid.  I think I liked the fabric envelope idea for these better.

I don’t have any sugar scrubs or lip balms to show right now.  But those would round out the product list I plan to start out with.

The logo and digital artwork are still a work in progress, but I’m narrowing it down to something like these tags which have the shop and product name on the front, along with ingredients list on the back.  Come to think of it, they really need the web address on there too …

Got feedback?

What do you think of the packaging and logo tags so far?  Would it catch your attention if you walked by at a craft fair?  What does the packaging convey to you?  Oooh, I almost forgot the grande finale photo with a sample set up, which still needs much work…

Tell me what ‘cha think, OK?

So now I’m ready to tell you that I have made the decision, and I’m prepping everything to begin my own bath and body business.  I will be phasing out the DuhBe shop on Etsy over time, and launching a bath and body shop this October.

It didn’t feel right calling the new bath shop Duhbe, so we came up with a new name which seems to fit the feeling I want – a little dark grunge with lots of playful whimsy.  It felt right.  Wonderland Bath & Body.  (We kinda liked Wonderland Bath project but were afraid people would assume they were signing up for experiments or something)

I’m on schedule to launch in October.  I have actually built a lab in the basement, all the ingredients and packaging are here, the product line is decided, now I just have to finish production and get my product liability insurance.  (at $500 per year, it’s a stiff entry fee into the bath and body world)  This week I’ll be figuring out what craft fairs to start with in October.  Now you understand why I’ve nearly disappeared from my blog?

Some of you are frequent commenters that have proven you can deliver honest feedback.  (umm, the ruffle pants debate for example? LOL)  So what do you think about all this?  Am I crazy, or finally on the right track?

Grab your loved ones and star gaze tonight.  Don’t forget to wish upon a falling star.  It doesn’t get any better than that.

(the little fairy reminded me -  grab some mosquito repellent while you’re outside, they have been viscious this year!)

OK.  It’s time I come clean and really tell my embarrassing story.  Readers who have been with me for a while have already figured this out about me, but they are kind enough to play along and be nice to me anyway.  Today, I am telling my story in the hopes that others can learn from my mistakes and craziness.

You see, Websters dictionary has a word for me …

vac·il·late  – waver in mind, will, or feeling : hesitate in choice of opinions or courses

I even created a digital collage to illustrate how my creativity works -

I’m suffering more confusion along this creative path I’ve chosen.  This is one of those posts where I ramble on and dump my brain onto you.  Here it goes…

Leaving one’s comfy corporate paycheck to pursue a creative career is probably a risky thing most of the time.  In my case, it was even riskier since I didn’t even know what creative path I wanted to take!   Other people leave their jobs AFTER they have sucessfully established themselves in their creative endeavors.  But not me.  Oh no –   I chose the hard way because I’m stupid like that.  I quit my job and gave myself 6 months to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.  The only requirement was that it must be creative because I knew I needed that.

Early on, I decided to start a business based on sewing.  This was not because I was super happy in front of my sewing machine.  Nope.  It was because I had already invested in good sewing machines as a hobby back when I had that big corporate paycheck.

Did I ever tell you all the ideas I went through of what to sell in my shop?  I don’t think so – here’s my train of thought over a 2 year period since leaving corporate life…  (it’s really embarrassing to admit all this, but feel free to laugh or sympathize at my vacillation)

1. It started with Teddy Bears.  I knew I would have an Etsy shop and I was going to be a bear artist.  “DuhBe” is actually the arabic word for “bear.”  I sold one bear in my shop at the very beginning, and gave several away to friends and family.  But I stopped making bears for 3 reasons – #1 all the heavy duty hand-sewing was hard on my hands and eyes, and #2 – I didn’t think I could be as good as other bear artists.  (I’ve since learned that #2 was the typical silly thinking of a fledgling artists, but I digress) and #3 – I saw the CPSIA coming and was worried how it would affect bear makers (I would have been OK with the new laws)
2. Out with the bears and on with something new.  I wanted to make floor length costume dusters, and I had 3 listed in my shop.  One of my favorite costumes includes such a piece, and I thought these would be a hit.  Not a single coat ever sold, including the one listed in my shop for a year and a half.  (update – the one coat still listed just sold last week.  funny how that works)
3. Then I went into recycling clothing into costuming, including some bellydance stuff.  There were also some hairdryers turned into steampunk rayguns.  (I’m embarrassed about some of that early stuff in my shop)
4. Next up, I started making accessories like neck cuffs, capelets and armwarmers from 2nd hand clothing.  I’m still selling these types of items.
5. At some point I figured out how to make fabric roses for a long coat project in #3 above.  But then I changed my mind and listed the flowers for sale just to get rid of them.  To my utter astonishment – the roses were a hit!  So I started making more of them in different colors and they became my “bread and butter item” which sold fairly regularly.  I finally had somewhat of an income stream.
6. But just making roses wasn’t creative enough for me.  I played with fabric collage, and I bought jewelry making supplies.  (I’ve never listed any jewelry items in my shop, despite the nice assortment of soldering equipment I have collected)  There are some fabric collage pieces in my shop today.
7. Along the way, there was always machine embroidery.  At some point I added a 2nd embroidery machine and learned how to digitize my own designs thinking that would be my new “thing.”  I like it – but I’m not driven to do it all the time.

All of these things were fun to experiment with, but nothing ever struck me with that “aha – I need to make this all the time” sort of feeling.  I spend more time away from my sewing machine than with it during the workday.  I think I even resent the sewing machine because I never really found anything I loved that I could build a shop around.

Dare I say it?  I’m coming to the realization that I don’t even LOVE sewing, I just like it in a practical sense.  I was never driven to sew as a hobby – it was something to save money and appease my DIY sensibilities.

So here I sit – with an Etsy shop full of sewn goods and no passion for sewing.  Now what does the artist do?

I’m sure you know where it’s heading.  But drama and suspense are good for blogging, so that will all wait for a future post.

Oh sure, I’ve been sewing orders for customers.  But nothing new and exciting to report.  So yesterday I finally sat in front of my sewing machine and played.  It should come as no surprise the new item was bath and body related.

This is a silk pouch for a lotion bar…

I’ve had that lotion bar sitting on my nightstand for maybe a month?  Just sitting there on a paper towel so it won’t leave a grease spot.  So I finally whipped up a pouch from recycled silks to house my solid chocolate scented lotion.

Then I needed to make a pouch for my sister in law.  She’ll be getting a lotion bar for her birthday this week.  But her taste runs more to the contemporary fabrics so I made this for her…

Those last 2 pouches had free motion quilting and embroidery on them.  They were sort of time consuming.  So I thought about making lotion bar pouches that were fast and easy but still made of fabric.  A quick jaunt into photoshop with the Digi Dolly legs, some treated muslin to print on, then a few quick stitches on the serger and VOILA!  This was born…

The ingredients are printed onto the back of this fabric pouch.  This one was a private joke between me and the husband.  Since my lotion bar is chocolate scented with lots of cocoa butter, I rub it on my feet at night and exclaim (very excitedly) that I have chocolate feet!  Thus the chocolate feet design was born.  It still makes me giggle when I see it, and then I smell the chocolate again.  Seriously, I want to take a bite of this solid lotion.

And now that I have fulfilled my promise of a sewing post, I will get back to the bath and body stuff that has consumed my time, money and imagination for the past month.  You will be hearing more from me, and it won’t take a month for the next post!  I suspect I will be coming clean to you in the near future.  (cheesy pun intended)

Welcome to my soap and beauty product hutch.  I found this metal pantry for $25 at the thrift store and bought it right up.  It’s 5 feet tall and has little shelves in the doors which are great for holding all my fragrance and essential oils.  Then it’s stuffed with vegetable oils, lye, sugar & salt (for scrubs) and all kinds of mixing apparatus – most of which was purchased at various thrift stores around town.

My great husband salvadged an old kitchen cabinet and hung it sideways on the basement wall next to the soap cabinet.  (wasn’t that sweet?)  I put some wire cooling racks and brown paper in there to make a curing rack where the soaps can dry out for several weeks.

Here are those same soaps from the curing rack placed nicely on some background paper. Clockwise from top left:  chocolate soap, blackberry soap, lime patchouli with hemp, goatsmilk round, castile.

Oh yeah, I also made some pure coconut oil soap for household cleaning.  I shredded and chopped it up in the food processor, then add it to borax and washing soda for a homemade laundry detergent.  So far, so good on that endeavor.  But I admit I haven’t done much laundry lately.   (The bag of soap still looks like cheese to me – must be because I live in Wisconsin with all the cheeseheads)

But the handmade soaps for hand and body are going GREAT!  I’m really getting off on washing my hands these days.  It’s pretty weird.  I made some paper wrappers for soaps to send to my parents.

I’ve also been playing around with lip balm, sugar scrubs and shampoos. But I don’t have any photos for those because there is nothing pretty yet.  The lip balm is very nice, but I need nicer labels before I can show them off.  (and since I don’t need 1000 pages of labels – that won’t be happening any time soon.)

For my next trick…I’ll be experimenting with solid shampoo bars and solid hair conditioner.  Sounds crazy?  Lush makes solid shampoo and GetLathered does a good business selling her solid shampoo on Etsy. I’m pretty excited to try out my own version and share my experimental results. These are not soap, but shampoo detergents in solid form.  There are many people selling soap bars for washing hair – those don’t work for me because soap is too alkaline and damages hair.  The shampoo bars are made from mild detergents along with many conditioning ingredients.  My ingredient shipment is due any day.  And after ordering my ingredients I realized I will have all the materials to make a lotion from scratch.  Oil + water + emulsifier + stirring = lotion.  Yep, I’ll be playing around with that as well.

But before I share all those fun experiments, I PROMISE to post SOMETHING sewing related in the next post.  I just don’t know when that will be.  I feel like a kid with a new chemistry set!

But it’s never about the obvious things with me, now is it??

I was reading this thread on the Dish soap forum about lining soap molds with fabric.   Now I do LOVES me some fabric, and I have quite a large stash of it, so I knew I had to try out this old school method.  I had been lining molds with parchment paper, but the idea of reusable fabric sounded better.  Besides, I really hated folding all that paper to fit the wooden box mold.

So I made up another small batch of pure castile soap last night.  Just olive oil and lye, plus some water.  Then I poured it into a small wooden box that was lined with some dampened medium weight linen.  After sitting in the mold overnight, here’s how the soap looked this morning.  Still pretty soft, but hard enough to unmold and cut into slices of soap.

It came out of the box fairly easily, even though some soap soaked through the linen and stuck to the wooden box.  It was not difficult to pull the fabric and soap out of the box.  You can see below how the soap soaked into the fabric while it was still liquid, then it wicked its way up higher on the fabric past the level of the soap.  Here I’ve pulled a side of linen away from the soap.  (it pulled away easy enough)

Now some soap makers are already saying “yuck!” because they like their soap sleek and smooth.  But I was hoping for the wrinkles and texture – which is what I got with the linen.  Here’s the block of soap completely free of it’s linen wrap.  (linen wrap?  It sounds like mummy soap)

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  It looks like cheese!  I was trying to capture the texture of the soap with the crosshatching of the linen.  It also seems that the linen holds onto air bubbles, where a smooth liner will let those escape.  I tapped the mold full of wet soap on the counter to release bubbles, but the side bubbles stay trapped by the rough fabric.

I cut the block into slices of soap.  Three of the edges have that linen texture.  Of course it will go away after a few washings, but it’s cool to start out with the fabric texture.

As for the liner, I just threw it in the washing machine along with the other soap rags and a few towels.  It’s ready to use again next time.

And while I’m showing photos of soap, here’s the other batch I whipped up last night.  (imagine the smell of blackberries – that’s what it smells like)

I’m working on my next blog post to share all the soap and stuff I’ve made thus far.  Then after that, I promise to get back to sewing.  I have several pairs of ruffle pants cut and waiting for their organic cotton knit butts to be attached.   Time to jump off my soapbox.  Wheee!